Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?

Okay -- I can see that. I had never thought about the present tense
usages before your previous post had brought them up, and it is
fascinating! Coupled with D. Fischer's observation of how Nephilim are
still mentioned as existing post-flood and yet had pre-flood origins,
these all begin to add up to a strong case Biblical for the
non-universality of the flood deaths.

--Merv

philtill@aol.com wrote:
> Hi Merv,
>
> I am in no way saying that these people were the literal fathers of
> the metallurgists, etc. I believe it means "father" in the same sense
> as Lavoiser being the father of chemistry. But my point was
> that there must have been a continuity of culture in order for them to
> really be the father of those things in this way. If Shem, Ham and
> Japheth were the only three people living in that generation of human
> history, then there is no way that the cultural continuity could have
> existed such that prior generations were the "fathers" of major
> cultural trends in the later generations.
>
> Phil
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mrb22667@kansas.net
> To: philtill@aol.com; asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?
>
> While I agree with your conclusion, this argument by itself would not
> have sold me on it. I know how my YEC friends would respond. They
> would note that to call somebody the 'Father' of something doesn't
> necessitate their being the biological ancestor of all who are in that
> field. After all, Lavoisier is called the 'Father of chemistry'
> without being the ancestor of all chemists. (Or is it Boyle? or
> Dalton? Will the real "father" please stand? I've always wondered
> about that -- it obviously is a loosely applied term.) But in any
> case the point stands that some of Cain's descendants could have
> originated the skill which was later attributed to them whether or not
> their direct descendants were still around to remain involved in it.
>
> But your point about the common 'non-universality' of the language
> usage is very convincing indeed!
>
> --Merv
>
> philtill@aol.com wrote:
>>
>> There is a good argument that Moses did not believe it was universal
>> (in the anthropological sense). Moses designated the three sons of
>> Cain's Lamech as "the father of all who travel with tents and cattle"
>> (pastoral nomadism), "the father of those who work with copper"
>> (metallurgy), etc. It doesn't say they "were the father of those who
>> did such things prior to the flood, but who were entirely wiped out
>> during the flood." Rather, he puts it in the present tense: /those
>> people, who the Isrealites were observing right then and there at the
>> time of the Exodus practicing pastoral nomadism or working with
>> metal, had obtained those cultural innovations from the people who
>> lived **prior** to the Flood./
>>
>> I think the church has never really allowed the significance of that
>> statement to sink in! It is truly breathtaking. If Moses had
>> thought that all of Cain's descendants had been wiped out in the
>> Flood, then he would never have ascribed the origin of those
>> significant cultural features to them. It would make little sense to
>> say that Ham or Japeth had taken a vacation from their dad Noah long
>> enough to practice some pastoral nomadism, just so they could return
>> to Noah and survive the flood and then re-initiate the nomadic life
>> again after the flood, such that it was really pre-flood people who
>> had initiated it. That's silly! Moses's statement clearly assumes
>> that the neolithic cultural innovators who lived **before** the flood
>> were the direct explanation for the existence of those practices
>> **after** the flood.
>>
>> In a nutshell, Moses assumed cultural continuity across the flood.
>> Thus, he surely must have assumed that the Flood was non-universal.
>>
>> I think this is entirely reasonable, much more so that to think Moses
>> believed the Flood was universal. Moses actually did have a way to
>> KNOW that the flood was non-universal. If he knew his Egyptian
>> history as it was recorded in his day, then he knew that it went way
>> back earlier than Noah's geneology and that it contained no flood.
>> We can verify that today by reading it. But the accounts that Moses'
>> anscestors had brought with them from Mesopotamia did include a
>> massive flood. So it was natural for Moses to realize that he was
>> dealing with an historical event that had occurred in Mesopotamia but
>> not beyond. The universal-sounding terminology that Moses used to
>> describe the flood was identical to the terminology he used to
>> describe Joseph's famine, which also he surely knew was non-universal.
>>
>> Phil
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Received on Thu Mar 22 20:31:56 2007